About the IAPP

Simon Schama is the author of seventeen books and the writer-presenter of fifty documentaries on art, history and literature for BBC2. His art criticism for The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism in 1996, his film on Bernini from “The Power of Art” won an Emmy in 2007, and his series on British history and “The American Future: A History” each earned Broadcast Critics Guild awards. He won the NCR nonfiction prize for “Citizens,” National Book Critics Circle award for “Rough Crossings,” and the WH Smith Literary Award for “Landscape and Memory.” This year he received the Premio Antonio Feltrinelli in historical sciences from the Accademia nazionale dei Lincei in Rome.



Schama writes on cooking and food for GQ, fashion for Harpers Bazaar and on everything else for the Financial Times. He curated the Government Art Collection show “Travelling Light” at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and has collaborated with Anselm Kiefer, John Virtue and Cecile B. Evans on contemporary art exhibitions and installations. His “The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words” was published in 2015 and the second volume, “When Words Fail,” will appear in 2017. In the autumn of 2016, “The Face of Britain,” a history of British portraiture, appeared as a five-part BBC television series, a book, and an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. He is currently working on “Civilisations,” a television history of world art.